


In The Arms of the Woman I Love

by LuxinTenebris



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, post-season 6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-02
Updated: 2016-07-02
Packaged: 2018-07-19 16:53:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7370032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuxinTenebris/pseuds/LuxinTenebris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knew what had to be done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In The Arms of the Woman I Love

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written and posted anything in near 10 years. This is my first foray with this world and characters. In other words, be gentle with my fragile soul.

Jaime could not bring himself to slay her as he had Aerys, even after all that had come about while he was away. _There is still time_ , he told himself. Time for what, he had not known. Jaime had tasked Bronn with tailing Qyburn to find the remaining caches of wildfire while he tried to keep Cersei from burning the rest of the city. There had also been the matter of removing the Mountain from his sister's side. He had filled her head with all the rumors of her enemies without to prevent her from seeing the enemies within.

It had almost worked, until Qyburn's little birds had brought whispered words of Jaime's betrayal to Cersei. Bronn and Addam had nearly found all the caches and secured them when Cersei had given Qyburn his final order, though the former maester would never realize it would be his last. Jaime had killed Qyburn just after his little birds had flown away into the dark of the city. Time had run out and Jaime knew there were no options left to him. He left to find his darkened mirror.

\---

The silence in the throne room is deafening. The hammering of blood rushing through his veins is all he hears. _There should be other sounds_ , he thinks. Part of the city is burning. Screams of the dying, frightened and desperate rise up into the night air without, but in this room, in the shadow of the throne, he hears nothing. 

At the foot of the throne is a hulking figure, hunched over. In his heart he knows what he will find when he gets closer, but he is frozen in that moment. The emotions roaring through him will rip him asunder. _Why?_ He wants to scream to the gods, old and new. _Why must it come to this?_

Jaime finally breaks his eyes away from the throne. He notes the dismembered body of Ser Gregor Clegan. Or at least what must have been the Mountains's body. Pieces of his armor are still alight with green flame. Pod is off to the side, sword in hand and face bloody. The boy looks torn between staying where he is and running to the throne. There are two prone figures next to him, dark heads close together. Alive or dead he knows not. 

Jaime moves, as if possessed, towards that ever spreading pool of crimson, its grasping, greedy fingers giving the marble a fresh coat of blood. _Lannister red_ , he thinks and flinches from the thought. Jaime forces his eyes up from the blood creeping across the cold floors. She is golden and beautiful, as she probably always will be to him, regardless of how they fell apart in the end. 

There is a faint curl to Cersei's lips, the mocking smile she had perfected in their youth. Even in death her eyes glare at him in hatred. _She loves me not_. It is a familiar glare, one he had tricked himself into believing never graced her beautiful face. His return to King's Landing during her coronation utterly shattered that delusion. 

If he is truly honest with himself that hatred had always been in her wildfire eyes, lurking within just waiting to be unleashed. He would always rationalize the loathing away. It was because of Father or Robert or any number of other people or things. _'Never me!'_ he had told himself when he had found that hate directed at him. 

He had always refused to look further than the surface with Cersei. _Did I genuinely even know her?_ After joining the Kingsguard and finding the ugly truth behind the brilliant white armor, he could not stand to have another conviction torn from him. Cersei was the perfect dream he had built in his mind, woven in gold and purity, so radiant that he ignored the darkness that grew over the years. _I would have lied to myself for the rest of my life before..._

Brienne moves her arm, her hand reaching up to Cersei's face. Those long fingers, encased in a gauntlet, gently rest upon Cersei's eyelids before pulling them down to cover once vibrant green irises. Eyes that were a reflection to his own. Brienne's fingers leave a swipe of crimson across both lids. 

_She holds her as if she was precious to her._ He can only see the top of Brienne's gore streaked blonde head as she stares down at the lifeless face of his golden twin. _My other half died_ , his mind whispers, _in the arms of the woman I love_. 

Brienne shifts Cersei in her arms, lowering her to the marble below. She is achingly gentle to a woman that would never have done the same for her. _She hated you_. He remembers the look on Cersei's face whenever she spotted or even heard so much as an utterance of Brienne's name. _I knew from the beginning that you could never stay with me..._

“Brienne.” He is surprised when he hears his own voice. It breaks the silence of the throne room for a brief moment, like a crack of thunder, before it is engulfed by the silence of the throne room. She does not look up. Instead she turns to stone before his very eyes. Unmovable granite encased in dark cobalt steel. _Look at me,_ he urges, _please._

Slowly Brienne lifts her face to him. Her left cheek is slashed diagonally from cheek bone to an inch from her wide lips. Her astonishing blue eyes are dull and pain filled. For the first time he finds her gaze shuttered from him. _What have I brought to her..._

Jaime kneels in the blood of his twin, Cersei between them, as he reaches for Brienne's face. She flinches, as if she feared him striking her, then gasps in pain. He watches as she reaches for her right side. The breast plate and chain mail beneath have been cut through as though they were made of nothing more than silks. Blood seeps out from her side, joining the blood pooling around them. 

“Jaime..” she whispers as her eyes roll into the back of her head and she slumps forward into his arms, nearly knocking the breath from him. He struggles to move her, but Pod is suddenly next to him. Between them they manage to lay her flat on the floor away from Cersei's body. 

Brienne is still breathing and the rush of relief is dizzying. For half a moment he thought the gods would prove how truly cursed he is. Pod scrambles away, but Jaime does not know where the boy has gone. His vision has tunneled and all he can see is the last person that matters to him.

There is a commotion near him and he hears the clink of a maester's chain. Pod and Bronn are lifting Brienne as a young, wild-eyed maester flutters next to them. There are soldiers and servants flooding into the throne room. He recognizes them as belonging to his Lannister forces. Jaime is lost in a sea of chaos as he watches Brienne set upon a cot and being stripped of her armor. 

Jaime stands to move to her side. As he steps toward Brienne he trips over something. At his feet rests Oathkeeper and another sword. _Widow's Wail_. Cersei had begun wearing the sword just after her coronation. Jaime remembered Cersei's bitter resentment when their father had denied her a sword. When she caught his eyes after noticing the sword strapped to her hip, he had irrevocably understood that the woman before him, this Queen, had nothing of his golden twin in her. 

He grabs Oathkeeper, its blade and pommel covered in blood. For a moment he could have sworn the blade shinned with a queer light. Jaime shakes his head and walks to Brienne, leaning the sword at the foot of her cot. 

She is covered in blood and bruising mottles her skin. The maester is sewing the wound below her ribs closed. At least Widow's Wail was Valyrian steel and left a clean cut behind. The cut on her cheek is still bleeding, but it must have also been given by Widow's Wail. Pod is smearing an ointment on a massive hand print on her neck that is blistered red. He can only think Ser Gregor managed to grab her with heated gauntlet. The mark runs all the way across her throat and a little over her right jaw. 

“The lady gonna survive?” Bronn is standing next to him, eyes flickering around the room as he asks his question. 

“She has lost much blood, ser. And she took a blow to the head...” The maester trails off, leaving his words hanging in the air. ”Only the gods could say.” He shoots Jaime a nervous look before setting his eyes back to his task. 

“Brienne will survive.” He hears himself say. He leans close to her ear, so only she may hear. “Live.” He commands, “Live, and fight, and...” _Don't leave me._

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly just wanted to twist that season 5 quote from Jaime around. I might make this into a oneshot collection later on (I do have a partial Brienne oneshot worked out placed before this), but for now I am going to leave this alone.


End file.
